File-server setup: Update

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File Server seems to work.
WHM backups have been configured and are FTPing backups daily/weekly/monthly to the server.

Will want to test out the backups on the AlienVPS server at some point to practice recovery.

The rest of the file-server still needs configuring. There are WAY too many options (especially for Samba) so if I will make this into a public release I will certainly have to make some new modules for webmin. Simeple File server module.

I also want to move the whole LAN to a LDAP setup so that all users get their passwords from the server. I will let the File-Server do the LDAP serving.

File server setup

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Setting up a file server at home. This server will take care of all external connections and working/active files. The UnRAID system will take care of all archived and inactive files.

I looked at solutions like FreeNAS and Openfiler and was left wanting a little more. On top of that, the updating of those solutions is scant at best. I prefer using up-to-date software and features as they becomes available.
So I decided to set up a file server myself. It will be based on OpenSUSE with Webmin as the GUI. I plan on making this a downloadable project from SuseStudio once it gets a little more mature.

I will document here the changes I am making to the system so that I can implement them in the SuseStudio version so there won’t be any configuration to the end user.

 

For Outsider’s File System, 0.0.1

– Added NFS server, and configured it.
NOTES: When setting up a share, for ‘Export to‘ option make sure that instead of Everyone, the option of Hosts is selected and * is entered in the field. That’s how suse sets up the share, and it doesn’t seem to work (at least not on my LAN) with Everyone selected.
See if this setting change can be made a default.
UPDATE: it doesn’t matter what the Export option is set to. The directory to be exported needs to be enabled. From the NFS Share module view, select (check off) the directory and click “Enable Selected” button

– Added Vsftp. The daemon seems to need to be started manually after a system reboot.
NOTES: Go into Webmin’s System > Bootup and Shutdown menu, select the service (or Action as it’s called there) and then click the Start on Boot button at the bottom of page.

-Samba configuration : read this HowTo.

– In Webmin, under the system modules, open the “Bootup and Shutdown” module, and make sure things like smb, nfsserver, (and other services) are started at boot.

Another Camera aid idea

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Shooting with a flash often needs an assistant to keep moving the flash around to track the moving subject, as the camera also moves to track the subject.

In some situations where an assistant is either not available or not practical. In these situations the flash is set in a location which would cover most subject locations, with a wide flash beam. Lots of flash power is wasted,  and it’s very inefficient.

What if the flash(s) could track the subject by themselves, always aiming the flash at the subject? Well, it may be possible using one of these Direction Finder tools.

The way it would work is that the flash (with a remote trigger) would be on a servo controlled gymbal, and the camera would paint the subject with a pulsed IR laser (pulsed so that the tracker only tracks the pulsed signal and not other continuous IR sources).

MN: Site Update

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The site layout needs to change.

For home-page: (the blog page will be another page)
On top: Site title section: site title on left with advertising space on right.

Below title section is the top navigation menu.

Large ‘top’ widget area. Divide the area (screen width) in 2 sections. One section will list an up-to-date list of podcasts (with link to the blog entry that featured it) and the other section will list the latest album releases in a chronological format (sorted by day posted).**
Widget area can be grown down for as many rows I need -> album reviews? photography?

Below the large widget area, is the main site content area. This space is divided 4/5 left area  (for content) and 1/5 on right for widgets.

Top of the right widgets bar has a sponsors area.

** Re: podcast widget area. The widget displays a limited number (6 or 7 of “featured/recommended” podcasts. The featured podcasts are choosen by me (have to work on a mechanism to allow for this). All podcasts will be tracked. And they can be followed in the blog area/rss feed, with the “featured/recommended” podcasts  being in the header of each blog.
All the podcasts will have a rating system implemented where users will be able to rate the podcast. This rating (average of last months’s worth of votes) in turn determines the sort order of the listings for both the featured and regular podcasts.

Mechanical Nation : to do

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For the podcasts, categorize the podcasts. Ones that are purely music, and ones that provide some other content.

Create a widget to display a list of the tracked podcasts with a link to their respective latest podcast. If a podcast has not had an update in xx number of days/weeks, take it off the widget list (but still track it/query the RSS feed internally).

New Layout-  Across the top will be the title. Beneath the title, there will be a grid, 2 boxes wide and x number of rows. Each box will contain a widget. Each box will have an defined height, and scroll bar. One widget would be the podcasts list. Another would be the latest album releases. Another would be latest photos. Another would be album reviews.

Kinetik4 photo book details

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I’ve decided on the details for the photo book. 81-120 pages seems reasonable. 35 bandsx2 pages per=70pages then 6-8 DJ pictures, + table of contents, + chapter(day) breaks (2 pages per)… certainly more then 80 pages, though less then 120.

8×10, Matte finish paper, 81-120 page.

7×7, Standard paper, 81-120 pages.

 

Links to refer to later:

Canadian photography law

Blurb books I came across that I liked:

MUSIC FROM THE BARRIERS | John Paul Gleason | Portfolios

 UPDATE: 10Aug2011

Up to about 113 pages in the book and that includes probably 6-8 empty pages. Expanded some band’s selection of photos so that there’s no more then 2 photos per page. Having 3 or 4 photos, shrinks the images down too much and since I have the pages to work with, keep the size as large as possible. The first page (with the artist’s title) used only one larger photo, and then subsequent pages get 2 photos per page.

Neurodance 2.8 shooting : thoughts

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Friday night (night before Neurodance) I was putting together my camera bag. Discovered that with the AC3 on the Pocketwizard TT1, I would not be able to use the Auto Focus assist tool that I made. Also, with the TT1 between the camera and the AF assist tool, the AF assist tool sits an inch higher then before. This throws off the alignment of the laser beam and the camera center AF point. Continue reading →

‘No input file specified.’ error + solution

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I created a test web site on my VPS, and like before, the way I would get to it was onsen.ca/~sitename . However this resulted in an error message “No input file specified. ”

Googling the problem resulted in no solution. Several site installs also resulted in no solution.

So I decided to try an older test site (djhanged) which I used to access at onsen.ca/~djhanged. It also didn’t work. This must be something to do with the DNS entries.

So I decided to use the VPS IP instead of onsen.ca. It worked.
I can now again access my test sites.